


Love Potion No. 9

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Caitlin is mysteriously unaffected, Cisco is a Love God, F/M, flagrant misuse of science, love whammies, so canon compliant really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-28 19:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: You'd think having people fall in love with you right and left would make for an amazing day. Cisco learns that it really, really doesn't.And what's worse, Caitlin is completely unaffected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for KillervibeDaily's Valentine's Day challenge on Tumblr.
> 
> I was going through my files and found a post I'd saved from the Tumblr user preciouswlw, "my favorite underappreciated au idea is “everyone is affected by some sort of love spell and falls in love with person A but person B’s behavior curiously doesn’t change at all”'
> 
> Thanks to Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome, who doesn't even go here but helped me avoid some really bad missteps in the area of LGBT representation. Any ones that I missed, please let me know and they are entirely my fault, not hers.

Cisco pelted into Caitlin's lab and slammed the door shut behind him, resting back against the panel with a wheeze.

"Cisco? What on earth?"

"Caitlin!" he yelped, grabbing for the door handle.

But she just peered at him with that familiar what-now crinkle between her brows. "Are you okay?"

"I - " he panted. "Uh. No."

"What is it? Why are you pressed up against the door like that? I'm fine today." She waggled her fingers. "No icicles."

"No, that's not it. There's - " He gripped the door handle for dear and fluffy life. "How're you feeling, Caitlin? Not, uh, not feeling  . . . horny or anything?"

Her brows lowered. "I _beg_ your pardon."

"Okay, so that's a no. Sorry. I know that was probably a little boundary overstep there - "

"A little," she said coldly.

"It wasn't for creep purposes, I swear," he said. "Something weird is happening. Look." He reached in his pocket and pulled out two scraps of paper and a business card. "I stopped in at Jitters this morning and besides my mocha latte, this is what I left with."

She blinked at them. "Are those all phone numbers? That's great. Are you going to call any of them?"

He held up the business card. "This guy was pretty cute," he said. "But don't you think three numbers is a little much for a rainy Thursday morning?"

"In fairness, you are having a very good hair day."

He tucked his hair behind his ears. It was excellent today, he had to give himself props. "Thanks. But I wasn't last night when my neighbors propositioned me by the mailboxes."

"Oh, well. That might be . . . interesting."

"No, not the hot couple. The old white couple with matching MAGA hats."

She made a face. "I can certainly understand why you wouldn't be interested."

"She called me a Latin lover."

"Well, that's gross and objectifying."

"Right? And then all those people at Jitters, and then right after, I went to my comics store to check for new issues because I didn't get to yesterday, and I swear to god someone groped my ass."

"Ugh!"

"I know! And the only nerds in the shop were the kind of mouth-breathers who usually need the cover of cosplay for that nonsense." He let go of the door and sank down in a chair. "That's three data points there. Seriously, Caitlin, this is weird, right? Maybe there was, like, an aphrodisiac ray that hit Central City."

"I went to the grocery store before I came here, and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary."

That news distracted him briefly. "Did you get anything good? Don't say kale chips."

She wrinkled her nose at him. Even Barry hadn't wanted to eat the kale chips, and he ate everything. "I got Oreos."

"You got me Oreos?"

"Who says they're for you? Maybe I wanted Oreos."

"Whenever you want Oreos, you eat mine."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, yes, they're for you." As he fist-pumped, she tapped her bottom lip. "But back to your thing. Did anything else strange happen to you this morning?"

"That wasn't bad enough?" When she narrowed her eyes at him, he relented. "No, as far as I know, I didn't get meta-whammied by anybody. And the MAGA couple was last night."

"Arm," she commanded, and he stuck out his arm for a blood draw.

She had it on a slide and was plugging in her analyzer when Iris came in. "Hi, guys. Barry's at a crime scene. Too soon to tell, but it might be Flash business."

"Aw, man," Cisco muttered.

"Look, that's what we're here for," Iris said. She paused and studied him. "Are you wearing new cologne?"

Cisco rolled his chair back a little. "No."

"Oh. Well, something smells nice." She bit her lower lip. Her voice dropped. "And I think it's you."

Uhoh.

She leaned against the desk, tipping in his direction like a drinking-glass bird. "And that's a really nice shirt."

"Thanks," he said warily, rolling another inch back. His chair hit the desk and stopped him cold.

Caitlin had paused in programming her analyzer and was watching with wide eyes.

"No, really, it is." She reached out and touched his sleeve, running her fingers up and down his arm. "What's this material?"

"Cotton?" Oh, shit, no, not this. He didn't want this.

Sure, he'd once called Iris hot, which she empirically was. But that was before she'd become part of the team. Having her hit on him felt sort of incest-y now. Not to mention she was monogamously married to one of his other closest friends.

That fact didn't seem to be uppermost in her mind. "Mmmm. So nice." She gave his arm a squeeze. "Have you been working out?"

Caitlin shifted in between them. "Iris. We're actually in the middle of something, so why don't you go check in with Barry and - "

Iris looked at her like she was a bug. "Excuse me? Can you give us some space here, for once?"

"I - what?"

Iris put her hands on her hips. "You know what, you hog Cisco constantly. Why don't you let some of us spend some time with him, hmm?"

Caitlin's eyes widened. "I - I don't _hog - "_

"You sure as hell do." Iris stepped around her. "Cisco," she cooed. "Wouldn't you like to come over tonight and hang out?"

"Movie night!" Cisco said loudly. "That sounds great. Team movie night. Ralph and Sherloque and Nora and Caitlin - " Lots of chaperones.

"No," Iris said. "I was thinking something a little more intimate. You and me."

 _Help,_ Cisco mouthed at Caitlin.

"And Barry, right?" she said loudly, from behind Iris. "Barry? Your husband? Love of your life in every reality? Barry?"

Iris paused and smiled. "Absolutely, Barry's going to be there too. He'll love it."

Caitlin reached out and grabbed the back of Iris's shirt. "No movie night," she said firmly, hauling hard. "Not tonight. You need to step out of this room and - "

Iris turned on her. "Get your hands off me - " She lifted her hand, and with a rush of horror, Cisco realized she was about to smack Caitlin right in the face.

And Caitlin's eyes were starting to go white.

"Okay!" Cisco yelled, jumping to his feet. "Okay, yes, movie night sounds great, but right now, you've got to go - um - you've got to go pick out a movie! Right? Sounds good?"

Iris had paused at the sound of his voice and was looking at him with big, melting eyes. "You mean it?"

"Sure do," Cisco said, taking the hand that was still raised and wrapping both of his around it. "Go pick us out a fabulous movie, Iris." He backed toward the door, his hands still wrapped around hers.

Iris followed, apparently having forgotten Caitlin was even in the room, much less that she'd been about to throw down with her and get iced hard.

"Tonight," she said dreamily. "Eight o'clock sharp. What's your favorite color? I'll go underwear shopping."

Large portions of his brain just went _nope!_ and shut down at that, but he retained enough functionality to say, "Blue," as he eased her through the door. "Can't wait."

He slammed it shut and leaned back against it.

"Wow," Caitlin said. Her eyes were still wide, but back to brown.

"Now do you believe me?"

"I believed you," she protested. "I just didn't realize how intense it was. Did everyone you met react this way to you today?"

"I didn't go a lot of places," Cisco said. The nice thing about breaching was that his morning commute was basically nothing. "And it's not like I got mobbed. Just flirted with and creeped on. Crept on?" He frowned.

"Crept implies the verb, not the noun."

"Creeped on it is. Thanks." He tried to remember his path that morning. "The barista gave me a huge discount, I remember that. And so did the comics-shop guy, although he might have been trying to make me happy after I got sexually harassed. And the girl ahead of me and the guy behind me in the coffee line - that was two of the numbers I got."

"Close enough to talk to," Caitlin said. Her eyes narrowed. "Or - "

The intercom buzzed. They looked at each other.

"Guys," Iris said. "I know you're there."

"Should we answer?" Cisco whispered, which was absurd because Caitlin hadn't hit the button to broadcast back yet.

"You guys, I don't know what that was. I'm so sorry. That was really weird."

Caitlin leaned over and hit the intercom button. "It was," she said. "There's something going on with Cisco. It's not just you."

"Is that the thing you were working on?"

"Maybe this is a trick to come back and molest my shirt again," Cisco said darkly. "Don't trust her."

"No," Iris said, hearing him. "No way. Believe me. In fact, _don't_ let me in that room. Caitlin, how are you? I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Caitlin said. "Honestly. I understand you were whammied. I'm sorry I grabbed your shirt."

"And I'm sorry I almost slapped you like a bad soap opera. But besides that? Are you - "

"It's okay, I swear. Cisco's safe with me."

Wow. Great. Hearing that felt . . . great.

"What did it feel like?" Caitlin wanted to know. "We're not sure what's causing it. We're trying to narrow that down."

"Umm . . . " Iris trailed off.

"Hey, it's okay," Cisco said. "Let's all agree that anything you felt or said or did was purely the result of the whammy and wasn't your fault, and anything you say right now is helping us and not perving on me."

"Yes," Iris said quickly. "Yes, okay. Sorry in advance anyway. Okay, you know what it was like, was . . . remember how in middle school? When you were first discovering the opposite sex?"

Cisco cleared his throat.

"Discovering all the sexes, I meant, sorry. Anyway, you'd get these sudden, intense crushes. Remember those?"

"Oh, god," Caitlin said. "Yes."

"It was like that. I walked in your lab, and my thought process was kind of - oh hey, Cisco looks nice today, oh my god, he really looks nice, I mean I always thought he was cute but he is genuinely _hot_ , and uh - um - " She cleared her throat. "At that point, I was pretty sure I was going to die if I didn't get in his pants."

Cisco put his head in his hands. "Yep," he said in a strangled voice. "Middle school."

"And how do you feel now?" Caitlin asked.

"Now? I'm in that baffled, embarrassed state you got after about a week. Like, wow, what was _that._ "

"Hmmm. Let's try something, okay?"

"Caitlin, I don't know - "

At the same time, Cisco said, "Wait a minute, are you sure - "

"It'll be fine," Caitlin said, patting his shoulder. "I'll be right here."

Yeah, but she'd almost gotten beaten by Iris five minutes ago. Cisco was pretty sure that if an actual factual catfight did break out, Killer Frost would emerge and put a stop to it. But he didn't like the thought of the fallout from that. No matter how long Frost had been their ally, no matter how whammied Iris was, Barry would never, ever understand her laying so much as a snowflake on his wife.

Caitlin went on, "And Iris, when you're prepared for the feelings, you can handle them better. You know that. I just want you to step in here for a few minutes and tell us what happens."

"Yeah. All right. But if I try to climb Cisco like a tree, Killer Frost has full permission to cool me down."

"Can we get that notarized?" Caitlin laughed nervously. "Okay. Come in."

For a moment, Cisco thought she wasn't going to, and then the door cracked open, Iris peeking around the edge like someone in a horror movie peeking into the basement. Her eyes met his, and he held his breath.

"Good so  far," Iris reported. "No reaction." She eased into the room. "Hi, Cisco, sorry about all this. Maybe it's like a first-exposure kind of thing."

"You think you're immune to me now?" Cisco said hopefully.

"I mean. Could be? I mean, I still think you're really cute, don't get me wrong. This is awkward. Maybe we should have that team movie night, you know? Oh." Her eyes widened.

"Coming back?"

"Yep," Iris said, backing out. "Yep. I just started thinking about how adorable our babies would be."

The door slammed behind her.

Caitlin gaped at it, then hit the intercom button. "Iris? Are you okay?"

"Give me a moment," Iris said and clicked off.

Cisco and Caitlin looked at each other.

"So we never mention that last part to Barry," Cisco said.

"Agreed," Caitlin said swiftly.

"Oh, shit, you think he'll - ?" He'd already had one friend hit on him this morning. It was deeply weird and unsettling if you didn't reciprocate.

"I don't know. Iris told me he's had crushes on guys from time to time, but none of them ever went anywhere."

"Well, yeah, probably for the same reason his other relationships with women never got too far."

"They weren't Iris," they said together.

The intercom clicked back on. "Okay, I'm better now. So I guess it's not a first-exposure thing."

"Was it stronger? Weaker?" Caitlin asked, already in science mode.

"About the same? It was like you said, I was prepared so I handled it, but it was still like sitting in the first row of Algebra class mooning over Mr. Calloway."

"Aww," Cisco said. "You had a crush on your Algebra teacher?"

"In my defense, so did Barry," Iris said. She sighed. "Okay, I'm still waiting to hear back from him on this crime scene he's at. If it's nothing, then we can help you with whatever this is. But if not - "

"We can handle it," Caitlin said.

"Just keep me in here," Cisco said. "Away from people." He honestly didn't think he could handle it if Nora starting looking at him all heart-eyed.

Now there was a question. Did the whammy affect people who weren't even attracted to men? Then again, he didn't know if she was bi or pan, even though she'd only ever gotten heart-eyed over women since he'd met her. Villainous women at that. Definitely one for the bad girls, their Nora.

He shook himself. Focus, Cisco.

"I think that's the best plan," Caitlin was saying. "Especially don't let Barry in."

"Roger that," Iris said, and signed off.

Caitlin plopped into her chair and bit her knuckle. "So clearly, it's not the sound of your voice," she said.

"At least, not over intercom." He leaned to the side to stare at his smeared reflection on the blank screen of one of her machines. "You think my face is doing something?" He rubbed his chin.

"Maybe? Or - look, when Iris was in here the first time - "

"I'm trying my hardest to forget that ever happened," he said.

"Well, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to go over it again with me, because I'm having a thought. Didn't she ask about your cologne?"

"I'm not wearing cologne," Cisco said. He didn't, generally, unless he was out to impress someone.

"I know," she said. "But there's a growing body of research on the effect of smell in sexual attraction. Not applied scents, but the actual odors produced by body chemistry."

"Are you talking about pheromones? I thought that was junk science."

She waved a hand. "Perfumes and colognes that purport to contain human pheromones are junk science. But humans actually do have a set of the same organs in our noses that other mammals use to detect pheromones. Very small, more present in babies than adults, but there."

"We also have an appendix, what's your point?"

She threw him a look. "My point is, maybe something or someone has thrown your pheromones into overdrive and that's what's behind all this." She opened up her program. "I wonder if it's going to show up in your blood chemistry at all." She fiddled with her analyzer.

He rested his chin on the back of his chair. "Caitlin?"

"Mmmm."

"Why aren't you affected?"

Her hand paused. "I, uh. I don't know."

"I've been in here half an hour and you haven't so much as fluttered your eyelashes at me. You've had plenty of time to whiff down my pheromones, if that's actually what's causing this, but  - nothing."

"Um, well," she said. "I - you know, maybe metas are immune. We do have a fundamental difference in our body chemistries from non-meta humans. Maybe that alters our perception of pheromones."

"I guess," he said. "Yeah, that might make sense."

She smiled at him. "And it's a good thing. We can get this figured out so much easier together than yelling from room to room."

He managed to smile. "When you put it like that, I'm kind of glad you're not into me."

She turned back to her computer. "Right."

Behind her back, he allowed himself to slouch into his chair.

In a very practical sense, she was totally right. He was glad she was here with him, and that he didn't have to lock himself in the pipeline and conduct this whole investigation over the intercom or by text. It made things easier. Really, it did.

But was it asking too much to have had like, _thirty seconds_ of Caitlin swooning over him?

Even if she snapped out of it. Put a clothespin on her nose, whatever. It would have been something to treasure up. Caitlin looking at him with soft, adoring eyes, her hands reaching out to stroke his shirt, her smile sweet and hopeful.

Just, basically, Caitlin feeling for maybe a minute the way he felt about her all the time these days.

He'd been doing his best to get over it. Swiping on the apps, flirting with people, making dates. But sometimes he felt like he had a Lovelorn Idiot sign painted on his forehead, and all his friends were kindly ignoring it. Even that one lady at the essential oils stall had -

He paused. "Hang on. Maybe something did happen to me."

She looked up from her screen.

"So, last night, I hit the Thirty-fourth Avenue street fest."

"Oh, right," she said in a bright voice, looking back at the keyboard. "Your date. How did that go?"

"It didn't," he said flatly. "She didn't turn up."

She swung around, face thunderous. "She stood you up?"

"She texted that she wasn't feeling well."

"Hmmm. When?"

"Six-thirty."

"You were supposed to meet at six," she said.

"Good memory," he said. "Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't great." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, since I was there anyway, I walked around for awhile." Feeling sorry for himself.

"Why didn't you call me? I would have met you."

"Didn't you have a date, too?"

"Right," she said. "Yes. But later. I could have come before that."

He had thought about it, actually, with the extra bonus that if she came to meet him, it would disrupt her date. But then she would be rushed and off kilter, and whatever dude she was meeting was probably taking her someplace nice and classy. Someplace she'd want to get all dolled up for.

He'd decided to be a good friend last night and not call her.

He decided it again today. "How was Tinder guy, by the way? Or Bumble dude, or Hinge man . . . I can't keep track of all your apps."

"It was fine," she said, waving a hand. "What happened at the street fest?"

"Fine," he said. "Wow. Sounds like it was a love connection, all right."

"Cisco. The street fest?"

"Right, right, okay. So I was wandering around, eating cotton candy, looking at stalls full of beaded jewelry and bad paintings - you know how the street fest is."

He'd been trying to enjoy himself, but he'd been down in that very specific way that you got when you were alone in a crowd, and you weren't supposed to be alone, and there was one particular person you wanted there so you wouldn't be alone, but they weren't, and you were.

"Anyway," he said, "I found this one stall. The lady was selling all this stuff made out of essential oils. Shampoo and soap and body lotion and - "

"Oh," Caitlin said. "Perfume and cologne, right?"

"Yahtzee," he said.

_"Come here, young man," she'd intoned, beckoning to him from her stall. "I sense a great sorrow in you."_

_She had heavy eye makeup and a bandanna wrapped around her head, giant gold earrings, a shawl with cheap jingling coins. Really just hitting all the stereotypes, considering she was about as white as Wonder Bread underneath all of it._

_"Madame Esmerelda is never wrong," she crooned in a bad accent. "You are unlucky in love, yes? I can see the signs."_

_Well, duh, he thought. They were surrounding by happy couples, basking in the summer sunshine. Holding hands, sharing ice cream, gazing into each others' eyes. And here he was, wandering through the crowd, eating too much grease and trying to enjoy himself._

_It didn't take a psychic._

_"Scent has a magic that only my people understand. Here." She'd whipped out an old-fashioned perfume bottle. "Try this. A special blend, guaranteed to bring you the love you yearn for. Passed down to me by my mothers' mothers, who all lived long and happy lives with their great and passionate loves."_

"So you bought some?" Caitlin asked.

"Oh, god, no," he said. "It smelled like ass. But I let her spritz me, just to be nice." And it hadn't played at all well with the fried food he'd eaten.

"Was there any reaction from anyone around you?"

"Hard to say.  Right after that I decided I was done with the street fest and ducked behind a tent to breach home."

She tapped her bottom lip. "How long after that did you run into your neighbors?"

"Like an hour? I remembered I'd been waiting for a package and ran downstairs to check the mailbox. But I washed the shit off. Believe me." He wrinkled his nose.

"Even if you did -"

The intercom buzzed to life again. "Caitlin, where's Cisco?" Barry asked. "I need him."

"We're both in here," Caitlin said. "But Barry, don't - "

At the same time, Iris said, "No, babe, wait, you'll get infected - "

"You guys, I'll be fine," Barry said. His voice dopplered away from the comms as he phased through the wall and kept talking. "I never get sick, remember? You're too - oh, hey, Cisco. Hey. Hi." He smoothed his hair and leaned back against the wall, in what was probably supposed to be a suave manner. "Uh. Hi. How are you?"

"Oh my god," Iris said, and Cisco grabbed Caitlin's hand and breached them both several floors away.

"Shit," Caitlin said, and he looked at her in surprise, because she hardly ever swore. She was fumbling her phone out of her pocket. "Iris?" she said over speaker.

"He's okay," Iris said. "He's not going to come after you or anything."

In the background, Barry was saying, "Whoa. What was that? That was weird."

"Where are you guys?" Iris said.

"One of the offices," Cisco said, batting a hand at the dust that spiraled through the air with the blast of their entrance. "One that doesn't have an intercom. Sorry."

Caitlin sneezed. "I don't think anyone's been up here since the explosion," she said, and sneezed again.

"Okay, I've got him out," Iris said. "Your lab is safe again."

"Are you sure?"

"Is that what you meant, infected?" Barry asked, still in the background. "I thought he had a cold! What the hell is going on?"

"I've suddenly become irresistible," Cisco said. To everyone but the one person he wanted to be irresistible to. "Caitlin thinks something whammied my pheromones, and I think it might've been something I got spritzed with at the street fest last night."

"Does that mean you can't vibe on the thing I brought from the crime scene?"

"Barry!" Iris and Caitlin both yelled at once.

"What? Just asking. Okay, okay. God."

Cisco leaned into the speaker. "Hey, man, I'll trade you. I'll vibe on the thing if you go pick up the lady  from the street fest."

"Awesome, you're on."


	2. Chapter 2

Cisco made Barry do his part first. He knew how it was - he'd vibe on the thing and there would be a Clue. Barry would run off, promising to hold up his end of the bargain later. Whenever later was. And then Cisco would be stuck cooling his heels in Caitlin's lab for the next hour or day or week, still wondering why this was happening to him.

Okay, week was pushing it. Barry probably wouldn't forget him for a week, and even if he did, the pheromone-whammy couldn't possibly last that long.

Could it?

His musings were cut short by screeches that filled the cortex and echoed through the intercom into Caitlin's lab. "Dios mio," Cisco said involuntarily, because Barry had forgotten to ask again.

"Sorry!" Barry yelled, gripping the thrashing woman by the shoulders. "It's okay, it's okay. I'll get you back just as soon as possible, but we really, really need your help right now, okay?"

Madame Esmerelda quieted down at that, looking around her with wide eyes as if just clocking that she'd been kidnapped by Central City's favorite boy in red.

Not for the first time, Cisco reflected that if Barry Allen didn't look like such a goddamn choir boy, even in his suit, he wouldn't get away with half the nonsense he did.

He stepped up to the big window in between Caitlin's lab and the cortex. Caitlin had pulled the blinds back so they had a full view of the other room. He waved to get her attention and leaned toward the intercom. "Hey there," he said. "Remember me?"

"Madame Esmerelda never forgets a face," she said, in a way that confirmed she didn't have a fucking clue who he was. 

"Uh-huh," Cisco said. "I stopped at your stall last night, during the street fest, and today I have some questions about your cologne recipe."

She drew her shawl around herself. "I do not divulge my concoctions to anyone. They are my heritage, my birthright. I brought them myself from the old country, passed down to me by my - "

Cisco crossed his arms. "Three things. One, you're from Des Moines. Two, your name is Ruth Simms. Three, in this dimension, that little cosplay you've got going on is hella racist. And special bonus round four, what the _ fuck  _ did you do to me?"

She stared at him a moment. When she spoke again, her accent was pure Midwest. It might as well have been layered in scalloped potatoes. “Did you look me up?”

"Something like that," he said.

He'd gotten a random vibe off her merchandise last night when he'd picked up a bottle of flowery-smelling lotion that looked like something Caitlin might like. At the time, he'd thought the whole charade was kind of funny, in an eye-rolling way. He wasn't laughing now.

“Please answer the question," Caitlin prompted. "What's in your scents? We promise we won't reveal your secret ingredients or anything."

Ruth crossed her arms with a jingle of her tacky shawl. "The ingredients are just essentials oils. I buy them in bulk from Amazon.  And the recipes are from Pinterest. Ten minutes with your phone and you can replicate my whole stock. The ancient-Gypsy recipe thing is just marketing."

"What specifically was in the one you squirted all over me?" Cisco asked.

She squinted at him. "You bought it from me?"

"No," Cisco said. "I just let you give me a sample. What was it? You said it would, uh - " He did his damnedest not to look at Caitlin. "It would bring me the love I yearned for."

"Oh my god. I say that to everyone. But - " Ruth rummaged in her shawls and her skirts, and pulled up a roll of fabric. When she unrolled it out on the console, it proved to be full of little tubes that her fingers danced over and back. "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm," she murmured, plucking one out. "Yes. I was using this one in the sampler last night. Passion's Flame. Cinnamon, ylang ylang, and patchouli. The rollerballs like this also have sweet almond oil."

Barry held out his hand. "I'll take that."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "That'll be seventeen-fifty."

Iris snorted. "We're not paying you for that. We need to analyze it and figure out what it did to our friend."

"I literally  _ just _ gave you the recipe. If it broke you out in a rash or whatever, well, I'm sorry, but buyer beware, right?"

"I wish it was a rash," Cisco muttered. 

Her eyes sharpened. "Why, what happened?"

"I'm suddenly irresistible to almost everyone I run into. I've gotten hit on more this morning than I have in the whole past year."

"Really," she said, eyes widening. She looked at the tube in her hands, lips pursed.

"Which is making my life extremely fucking inconvenient, so if you'd tell me how to reverse it - "

She shrugged. "It's cologne. You wash it off."

"I did!" Cisco said. "I also showered this morning. And yet, here I am. So the recipe ain't gonna cut it." He pointed. "We need that cologne."

"Twenty-two-fifty," Ruth said. 

"What?" Barry said.

"I have to pay rent, buddy."

Barry patted his suit. "This actually doesn't have any pockets, so I, um - "

Caitlin gently bonked her head against the door jamb, then grabbed her purse. She had gone into the cortex so fast Cisco didn't realize what she was doing until the door snapped shut behind her. "Here," she said, slapping bills on the console. "Two hundred dollars. Give me that, and don't sell any of your stock until we contact you again." She plucked the tube out of Ruth's hand.

"I can't shut my stall down! That's my livelihood!" But Ruth grabbed the money.

"It's a rainy Thursday morning, would you really make more than two hundred dollars at your stall in the next few hours?"

"I might."

"Shut down," Caitlin said, stuffing the tube down the front of her shirt and staring Ruth down. Even from this distance, Cisco could see the glimmer of Frost in her eyes.

Ruth blinked and almost visibly wilted. "Fine," she said. "I'll read tarot instead. I've got an app."

"Great," Caitlin said. "Do that."

Iris stepped up next to her. "And don't even think about leaving town. We know how to find you."

"Fine," Ruth said. "God." She went over to the glass so she was eye-to-eye with Cisco. "Hey, man, I don't know why this is happening, but my advice is, relax and enjoy it. You could get laid twice before lunch." She looked around. "Three times."

Cisco kept his eyes away from Caitlin, who was muttering something in Barry's ear. "But it's not really about me. It's about whatever your cologne is doing to their brains."

"What's the difference, if everyone has a good time?"

"It's not what I want, and it's not what they want, not really. And I want it to stop," he said. 

"Fine, whatever," she said. 

"And seriously, knock it off with the Gypsy stuff, okay? It's not a Halloween costume."

"It's  _ marketing, _ " she said. "And it's not racist."

“How do you figure?”

“Well, my great-grandmother always said my grandfather’s father was a Gypsy horse trader who came through town. So I’m one-eighth Gypsy. It's not racist if I'm doing it."

"Riiiiiiight," Cisco said. "Okay. Bye."

Barry whooshed her away. In another second he was back, with a paper bag that clinked and jingled. "Just like you asked," he said, turning over to Caitlin.

"Great," she said, taking it. 

"Is that her whole stock?" Cisco asked. 

"Just of that particular scent," Caitlin said. "I paid enough for it. And I don't know about you guys, but I don't really trust her not to be selling this as a love potion at a double markup. Can you imagine?"

"Yeah, it would be a pain," Barry said. "Can Cisco vibe on my thing now?"

* * *

Cisco sent Barry on his way with a report of people in the convenience store all turning on each other in a sudden rage. The entire cash drawer had disappeared sometime during the riot, to the tune of several hundred dollars. 

"Could you tell why?" Barry asked, taking back the torn beanie hat he'd picked up from the crime scene.

"No clue, man. It looked meta-related, but I couldn't tell who it was from this guy's angle. You'll have to check the tapes. Or interview the witnesses."

"They're all under heavy sedation in the psych ward at Mercy General," Barry said gloomily. "I hate watching tapes."

"Please," Cisco said. "You can speed them up and get through them all in about ten seconds."

"Yeah, but it  _ feels _ like longer," Barry said, and zipped off to CCPD.

Meanwhile, Caitlin was setting up her tests. As the wind of Barry's departure settled, she twisted the cap off the tube of perfume. "God, this stinks," she said, making a face. "I mean, I've bought natural perfumes and essential oil mixes before. Some of them are quite nice. But this is  _ awful." _

"Warned you," Cisco said. 

She sniffed again. "I'm really not getting anything off this except a headache."

Cisco thought of something. "You know what, it whammied Barry. So metas aren't immune."

She put the cap back on. "That's true."

"But you're still not whammied."

She uncapped it again. "Well, you know, Killer Frost has a lot of unexpected side effects. She's so different than any other meta.  Maybe she's making me immune to this."

"I guess that's it," he said. 

"Probably." She ran the rollerball over a wad of cotton and tucked it into her analyzer.

Hoping that the effects wore off with time, they used Iris as a test subject, calling her in every half hour or so. Every time, she came in, took a deep breath, and went, "Yep, still active," while backing out.

Cisco breached downstairs to his lab and brought back his datapad and a few tools. He cleared a space on one of Caitlin's less-used counters to tinker. But while he could normally immerse himself in his projects, he found himself slowly losing his mind.

On the one hand, it was always nice to hang out with Caitlin like this, both of them quietly working without any mayhem going on. But on the other, it was a constant reminder that while everyone else seemed to be desperate for him, Caitlin remained totally unaffected. 

"I need a snack," he said, and breached to the kitchen before she could do much more than look up. Luckily, nobody was in it. He checked the cupboards and then remembered Caitlin had bought Oreos. He checked the secret, Barry-proof hiding place and found them. 

He considered spending the rest of the afternoon in his lab, eating Oreos and working on his designs, but what if Caitlin needed him? Or she had a breakthrough? He breached back.

She said, " _ Cisco _ ," reproachfully.

"It was fine," he said. "Everyone else is out, working on Barry's convenience store mob riot robbery. Oreo?" he asked, holding the package out.

"Thanks," she said, taking one. 

He took three and put them all in his mouth at once. "So how's it going?" he mumbled around the sugar.

"Well, I've tested every single tube," she reported. "Just in case they were from different batches. They're not, by the way. And I'm not finding anything strange. It's a lot of organic and inorganic compounds, but not a trace of dark matter." She uncapped a tube, sniffed it again, made a face. Then she cocked her head and studied it for a moment before dabbing it onto her wrists.

"Caitlin!" he mumbled, spitting out cookie crumbs. "What are you doing?"

She held out her wrists. "Anything? Do you want to fling yourself at my feet and swear eternal devotion?"

No more than usual. He shook his head and swallowed his mouthful. "Maybe I'm immune because it's already on me."

"Maybe." She tapped her lip for a moment.

Out in the cortex, Ralph ambled in. He looked around for a moment and then hit the intercom. "Hey, guys," he said, waving at them through the window. "What are you doing hiding in there?"

Cisco raised his brows. "Didn't Barry tell you what's going on with me?"

"Oh, yeah, he said something about it. I guess you can't leave? Sorry, dude." 

"I'm hanging in there. What's up?"

"Barry sent me over with something else for Cisco to vibe on." He waved a small plastic card, then paused to look at it. "Don't know why he couldn't run this over himself. Anyway, we're hoping you get a better angle."

Caitlin jumped up. "I'll come get it."

Cisco caught her arm. "You sure?" Ralph seemed to have grown out of his pervy ways over the past year and change, but the whammy might make him regress.

"It'll be fine," she whispered back. "He likes Frost better, remember? Perfect test subject."

"Yeah, but if he gets aggressive or something - "

"Ralph? Oh, please. If he lays a finger on me, I'll let Frost out to play."

"He might like that," Cisco said, but let her go.

She went out into the cortex, but instead of grabbing the ID card, she leaned against the console. "Hey, Ralph, so Barry told you what Cisco and I are working on, right?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure did." Ralph poked around a box of donuts and pouted when he found it empty.

"Okay, good. Can you help us with a test here?" She held up her wrist. "Do you smell that perfume?"

He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. "It's pretty nasty."

"Do you feel anything?"

"Nauseated?"

"I mean about me."

He squinted at her, and then his face fell. Thankfully not literally. "Oh, I see what's happening here."

"What?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Oh, man, this is awkward. Caitlin, you know, I like you, but I really consider you just a friend. And I'm really flattered. I am. But I just don't see you that way, you know?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh, wait, no," she said. "No, Ralph, it's the experiment - "

For some reason, he looked over her shoulder at Cisco, in her lab, before glancing back. "Sure, sure, experiment. Like I said, I'm really so flattered." He put his hand on her shoulder. "And hey, I want to say, I'm proud of you for putting yourself out there, considering. You know? It's really a step for you. I'm just sorry I couldn't reciprocate."

She shrugged his hand away. "Ralph, I wasn't hitting on you."

He gave her a soulful look. "I'll give you some space. I understand. We can pretend this never happened, if you want."

Cisco was weak with laughter when she came back in. "Poor baby, did Ralphie shoot you down?"

"Shush," Caitlin said haughtily, picking up a bottle of rubbing alcohol and dripping it onto a cotton wad. "There could be all sorts of reasons it didn't work. Maybe because of different body chemistry between you and I - maybe his elasticity makes him immune in some way - " Her mouth turned down as she wiped her wrists clean. "Or maybe he thinks I'm just that completely unattractive."

Cisco leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Well, if it makes you feel better,  _ I  _ think you're gorgeous." Still laughing, he took the ID card out of her hand and vibed on it briefly. 

Figuring he was safe, he went out into the cortex to tell Ralph, "Sorry, buddy, not a whole lot new from this. From the looks of it, everyone just lost their minds at the same time."

"Right," Ralph sighed. "And someone threw a jug of milk at the security cam, so we have pretty limited footage." He took the card back. Then paused and studied him. "Hey, you been working out?"

"What?"

"You just seem a little more buff." He smiled wistfully. "I always did like broad shoulders."

"You what?"

"What?"

Cisco stared at him.

Slowly, Ralph's expression shifted. "Uh," he said. "I - I have to go now."

He wasn't a speedster, but he was gone in seconds.

Blinking, Cisco turned and went back into Caitlin's lab. She was sitting with her mouth hanging open. 

"That was unexpected," he said, flopping back down in his chair.

"To say the least."

"Did you ever know - ?"

She shook her head. "From the look on his face, he didn't either."

Cisco chewed on his lip, then let it go. Whatever was going through Ralph's mind right now was his to untangle. "Guess my whammy's still in effect."

Caitlin picked up the cologne tube and frowned at it. "Maybe it's not this at all." She sighed. "I guess we're back to square one."

He helped her pack them all up in the paper bag, glad to see the last of them. "Faugh, this stuff," he said. "I could even smell it while I was vibing."

Caitlin looked up, eyes wide. "Wait, while you were vibing?"

"Yep." He gestured. "Right up my nostrils."

"The second time too? Just now?"

"Both times. Bleh."

"But I'd already washed it off!" She held up the bottle of rubbing alcohol. "With this. There's no way you should have been able to still smell it."

He frowned. "Well, I did." He leaned over and sniffed, smelling only Caitlin's light, familiar scent. "That's weird. Nothing."

"Have you ever smelled things in vibes before?"

"Sometimes. What are you thinking?"

"Pheromones," she mumbled. "There are sex pheromones, but research in insects has also shown pheromones that incite aggression or gathering behavior or . . . " She trailed off and grabbed for her keyboard.

If she got too deep into PubMed, she might not come out again for hours, so he scooted up next to her. "Aggression? You mean like the entire population of a convenience store up and losing their minds?"

"Uh-huh," she mumbled. "Uh-huh, uh-huh . . ."

"But the tests," he reminded her. "No dark matter."

"Right." She bit her thumbnail, scowling mightily at the screen. She reached out and pulled a tube out of the paper bag, holding it up to look at the light through the liquid inside. "Cisco," she said distantly.

"Mmm?"

She lowered the tube. "Yesterday, at the street festival, did she use one of these rollerballs on you?"

He thought. "No," he said. "She spritzed me with this old-timey perfume bottle. I thought it was kind of neat, right up until I smelled it."

She capped the tube again and dropped it back in the back with a clink. Tapping swiftly on the keyboard, she brought up a Google Image search for "perfume atomizer." "One like this?"

"Yeah!" He pointed at a picture halfway down. "Like that, with the bulb and the tassel. Right out of a black and white movie." He peered at her. "What are you thinking?"

She poked a finger at the bag, which clinked again. "Scents in these rollerball designs are meant to be applied directly to the skin. It's why there's a carrier oil that dilutes the strength of the essential oils."

"Okay . . ." 

"Those - " She pointed at the screen. "Spray a cloud of droplets over a large area, and the oils are diluted in water or alcohol instead."

"You think that whatever Ruth diluted it in for the sample might contain dark matter?"

"Maybe. We need to see that sample bottle."

* * *

When they called him, the Fastest Man Alive said, "Guys, can it wait?"

"Um," Cisco said.

"We spotted someone on the security tapes," Nora explained. "A woman who came in right before it all started. We think she might be our meta, but we don't know what she did." She made an annoyed noise. "And Ralph's disappeared on us."

Caitlin opened her mouth, but Cisco said, "That's okay, guys. We'll take care of our thing and let you know what happens. Good luck with your thing." He ended the call. 

"Cisco, this might be everyone's thing," she said.

"We don't know that yet," he said. "And we have a better theory of what's actually going on than they do, plus we're both badass superheroes in our own right. We can handle this."

"What about your - ?" She waved.

"We'll be out in the open air. I'll wear some of that shitty cologne of Ruth's. And a poncho over top of it."

She looked skeptical.

"If there's any piece of raingear less sexy than a poncho, I don't know what it is. Look, with this rain, hardly anyone's going to be there. It'll be fine."

* * *

He regretted his confidence when they walked out of the alley he'd picked as a landing spot. He'd been right; there were very few people at the fest today. But the ones who were seemed to gravitate to him like iron filings to a magnet.

Not every single person. But there was a kind of zone around him, farther out than he'd expected, where people started to turn their heads toward him, where their eyes sought his seemingly without them knowing why.

He got more smiles, more random greetings, more significant eye contact in one block than he usually did in a week. That was okay, mostly. He didn't mind friendliness, although this was a little much.

A couple of people caught his eye and blushed beet-red. A pack of teenage girls erupted in giggles when he said, "Excuse me," because they were taking up most of the sidewalk. A guy making balloon animals under a tent popped three of them because he couldn't stop staring at Cisco. 

That wasn't the creepiest, though. There were people - mostly men but a couple of women - who walked up too close too him, whose smiles were more like smirks, who looked him over like a side of meat. 

Caitlin noticed them too, and scowled fiercely at them. "Are you okay?" she said to Cisco after a particularly oily-feeling up-and-down perusal from a clean-cut guy in a windbreaker.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Cisco said, shaking his shoulders. "Let's keep looking. I swear it was on this block. I mean, I'm pretty sure."

"Cisco," she said a few minutes later. "Is it me or are there a lot of police here today?"

He looked around. "Now that you mention it, yeah." There were always a few uniforms hanging around public events like the street fest, but it seemed like they saw one of the boys or girls in blue every few feet. 

"Let's ask. There's Officer Imura over there." 

"I'll hang back," Cisco said. "Over here." Benny was a good guy, and not hard on the eyes, either. If he were to ask Cisco out on a day when he wasn't pumping out pheromones because of dark-matter-infused cologne, it would be a date.

But that day wasn't today.

He leaned against a lamppost and pulled out his phone, trying to tilt it so the raindrops didn't spatter on the screen. Equally trying not to meet people's' eyes.

"Hey," someone said in his ear, and he jerked in surprise. It was a woman with a yellow flower in her bright red hair and a t-shirt that said  _ I Aim to Misbehave. _

"Hi," he said.

"Don't I know you?"

"Don't think so."

She cocked her head and did one of those lip-bite-smile combinations. "Well, I'd like to know you. I'm Melissa."

He almost smiled back, because it was instinct and polite and she was pretty cute. And that t-shirt. But she put her hand on his arm and he remembered that she was whammied and this wasn't real.

"I'm actually waiting on someone," he said. 

"No harm in making a new friend while you're waiting." She edged closer, millimeters away from leaning up against him, rain-spattered poncho and all.

Shit. He looked over her shoulder and saw Caitlin standing a few feet away, her face unreadable in the shadow of her umbrella. "Well, here she comes, so - " He circled around her and said, "Hey, babe," to Caitlin while taking the umbrella out of her hand, holding it over both of them.

"Hi," she said, taking his arm like they did this all the time. "Ready?"

"Mhmmm." They walked off and he resisted the urge to look behind him. "Thanks," he murmured. "Perfect timing. What did Benny say?"

"Apparently the regular public-event detail had a record number of harassment and assault arrests yesterday and last night," she reported.

"Let me guess," Cisco said. "Did the fights break out when someone wouldn't leave someone else alone after they said no?"

"Got it," she said. "And by the time they got to the station, they were all confused and didn't really know why they'd done it."

"That sounds about right," he said, squinting through the strengthening rain. 

"Benny was a little hurt you didn't come over to say hi," Caitlin said after a moment. "I told him you had a cold and didn't want to spread it."

"Thanks," he said. It was a flimsy excuse at best, considering they were out here in the rain, but he appreciated the effort. "I just didn't want to deal with Benny if he got whammied too. It's like mind control."

"Is that why you didn't want to talk to that girl right now? She looked like your type. I almost didn't want to butt in."

"I'm not saying I wouldn't have gone up to her at a club, but it was the pheromone talking right now."

"It's really throwing you off," she said after another moment. "All this attention."

"Yeah. I guess. Yeah."

"Why?"

He frowned over that. "If you'd asked me yesterday, I would have said I would love getting hit on constantly, but it doesn't feel . . . " He considered. "Honest."

"Honest," she repeated. 

"It's the whammy. It's not really about me."

She hummed. "You know, Benny said that a lot of people they picked up yesterday had prior incidents of the same kind."

"That makes sense," he said.  


"Right, they were already the type of person who wouldn't back off. So I don't think the pheromone is creating anything. It's just amplifying what was already there."

"But I don't get this kind of attention every day. That's why it's so weird and unsettling."

"Well, but I'm willing to bet that people do notice you every day. They look at you and they think what pretty eyes you have, or how nice your smile is, or how well your shirt shows off your shoulders, or they just feel a  _ pull  _ to you. One they can't explain but they enjoy anyway."

He felt heat crawl up his neck, and made a joke out of it. "Damn, you're making me blush." Did she really notice his shoulders like that?

"Not everyone is reacting to you today, just like not everyone feels or notices any of that for you all the time. Doesn't it make sense that all the pheromone whammy is doing is bumping normal attraction up a little?"

"A lot," he said, looking away from a woman who looked him up and down and then obviously licked her lips. 

"Mmmm," Caitlin said. "So people who would have noticed you anyway but not made any kind of move - " She shrugged. "Suddenly are."

His heart plonked down into his stomach. She hadn't reacted to him at all today. She was basically saying she felt no attraction to him whatsoever.  


No, he reminded himself. Frost was neutralizing this. Right? Right. So she was acting completely normal; it didn't say anything about how she felt about him on a regular basis.

"So, is it me or isn't it?" he asked.

"Those things are all you, but they're not all of you. When someone follows that attraction and spends time with you, that's when they find out that you're smart and sweet and funny and kind, and then they want to spend more time with you. Maybe their whole life."

They'd stopped walking and stood on a corner. Rain drummed on the umbrella overhead and dropped off the edge, turning it into a bubble encasing them. Her hair was speckled with diamond drops of water, and her eyes were warm and beautiful in the dim, chilly light.

He felt like he could fall into them and never come up for air.

A blush crept up her cheeks, and she looked away. "I mean. It's a theory." 

She started to pulled her arm out from his, and he hugged it closer instinctively. "No, don't." When she looked confused, he said, "I think it's holding people off. And it's easier to fit us under the umbrella this way."

She didn't mention his poncho.

He looked around. "Hey, I recognize this area." He squinted through the rain. "Yep, there it is."


	3. Chapter 3

Ruth sat under her dripping awning, scowling at a pack of tarot cards spread out on the table, with her phone next to them. She looked up as they approached. "You," she said. "You stole my stock."

"Did not," Caitlin said. "I paid two hundred dollars for it. Anyway, here it is. I only discarded one tube. I tested the others with sterile cotton." She set the paper bag on her table.

Ruth poked at it. "So is it a love potion or isn't it?" she said eagerly.

"Inconclusive," Caitlin said. "Can we see your sample bottle?"

"You going to steal that too?"

"We just want to see it," Cisco said. He almost hoped Ruth was an evil meta that they could put in Iron Heights, because honestly he was sick of her nonsense.  


She huffed and picked up a square-cut perfume bottle with an aerosol top - the kind of thing you could find in any drugstore. 

"That's not the one you used yesterday," Cisco said. "That one was all vintage."

Ruth snorted. "Bitch across the road took it back."

"Who?"

She gestured and they both turned to look at a stall on the opposite side of the street. A fancy sign overhead announced it as "Bella's Antiques." For a rainy Thursday afternoon, it was packed. At least twelve people were crammed into the stall, perusing shelves of what looked like garage-sale tchotchkes.

"Popular place," Cisco said slowly. He wanted to go over there suddenly. For no reason at all, just to go in.

A pull he couldn't understand. 

Something buzzed at the base of his skull.  _ Follow this hunch, Vibe. _

"Always is. God knows why; she's got a bunch of crap if you ask me. I've been lusting after that bottle for months."

"Why?"

Ruth rolled her eyes at him. "I sell scents. Wanted something elegant." She huffed. "But she always keeps it right up front with her and won't sell it." 

Caitlin narrowed her eyes. "How did you get it?"

She smirked. "Yesterday, she wasn't there, so I got her ditzy assistant to sell it to me." The smirk dissolved. "But last night she came storming over yelling that it wasn't for sale and she needed it back."

"You gave back it to her?" Cisco asked.  


"Sure, for three times the price I paid."

Caitlin said, "Yesterday, after you bought it, was the stall very crowded?"

Ruth shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe not. What do I care?"

Cisco caught her eye and gave his head a little shake. It had been dead yesterday, from what he could remember. Not the mob scene it was today.

Caitlin said in his ear, " _ Gathering behavior," _ and he nodded.

It hadn't been the perfume. It had been the bottle.

Maybe, he cautioned himself. Maybe, maybe. They'd have to test it with the portable scanner in Caitlin's purse.

"We're going to go over there for a little bit," he said. "We might be back."

"Fuck. Seriously? Again? Fine." Ruth plopped down in her chair, scowling, and started unpacking the bag that Caitlin had brought back, tossing them onto the velvet so they clinked together.

Cisco took a moment to hope she didn't break one. They might have to evacuate the street.

They went across the street. The closer they got to the crammed stall, the harder he felt the pull. 

At his side, Caitlin murmured, "Oh, that's  _ strange. _ "

"Right?" he said. "There's not even anything that I want to see, but I just want to keep walking over there."

She glanced at him. "Do you want to stay out on the street?" And not go in the crowded booth with a bunch of people who could get whammied, she meant.

He paused and shook his head. "I'll deal."

Hell, maybe the double whammies would go to war with each other. 

His assessment of the merch as garage-sale turned out to be generous, once he saw the stall and its contents up close. Worn paint, chipped china, dusty and dirty items. A few looked smoke-stained. 

A woman stood just inside the awning, a cash box and a phone on the table in front of her. Next to both of them was the vintage perfume bottle that Ruth had spritzed hm with the day before.

"Hi," she said warmly, beaming at them. "Welcome. Can I help you find anything special?"

"Just coming over to see what you've got," Cisco said. He took a step closer and felt the pull like a hook behind his navel, trying to haul him toward the back of the stall. He risked a glance and saw nothing but another shelf full of junk. Salt and pepper shakers shaped like farm animals, chipped teacups, chintzy crystal swans with broken beaks.

But to get there, he'd have to walk past the entire stall's worth of merchandise, which was probably the point.

"Are you Bella?" he asked.

"That's me," she said.

"You've got some nice stuff," Caitlin said brightly. "Where do you get it all?"

"Oh, here and there. Estate sales. Online lots. Sometimes people sell directly to me."

"Is this everything?" Cisco asked. A woman brushed past him, on her way into the stall, and then paused. He turned his back on her.

"Yep, my whole shop." Bella's face went sour for a moment. "Used to have a brick-and-mortar place, but it burned down last May."

"May," Caitlin repeated. "Really. How did that happen?"

"It was when the Flash busted up that satellite overhead. Piece of debris came right through the roof."

Cisco flinched. He always felt guilty when he heard about collateral damage from their day-saving. Not that it was their _ fault _ exactly, and if Barry and Nora hadn't busted up that satellite, Central City would be a smoking hole in the ground and everyone would have the approximate brainpower of chocolate pudding.

But still.

"That's a cute perfume bottle you've got," Caitlin said. "Vintage?"

She picked it up. "Yes."

"Did you have that bottle in the shop?"

"Yes," she said warily. Her bright retail smile had dimmed. "It was about the only thing that survived in the part that got hit. Just some smoke damage."

"Could we see it?"

Her hand tightened around it. "Why?"

"Just curious," Cisco said. "She likes old pretty frou-frou things, right, Caitlin?"

"Right," she said belatedly. "Love them."

Bella smiled again, but this time it looked plastic. "Well, then, I can show you some other things you'd like."

"I would really like to see that one," Caitlin said.

"It's not for sale."

"I don't want to buy it, I just want to see it."

Her hand tightened further. "It's not for sale," she said again.

Caitlin said, "I just - "

"Looks like you've been in a fight," Cisco said. 

Her head whipped around, disordering the hair that had been combed over her forehead to half-hide a lurid bruise near her hairline. "No, I haven't."

"What's that bruise, then?"

"I - I ran into a door."

"So you didn't spray that bottle in a crowded convenience store, and then steal the whole cash register in the ruckus?"

Her face pinched. She spun around and bolted.

"Hey!" Cisco yelled, springing into a run after her. "Hey!"

"Stop!" Caitlin shouted, catching up with him.

His poncho flapped and swirled and tangled in his legs. With a grunt of annoyance, he wrestled it off his head and tossed it away. The rain drummed down, soaking him to the skin. For a moment, he hoped rainwater would work to wash the pheromones away, but it seemed unlikely. "Outta the way!" he bellowed at the other people in the street, who already looked bewildered by Bella showing her way through.

"Where ya going, handsome?" an older lady called out, and her son said, " _ Mom!" _

They caught up with her half a block later, just where Vine Avenue crossed Thirty-fourth. Cisco managed to catch her arm as she stumbled and hauled her up straight. "We just - " he panted. "Want - to see - that -"

Bella squirmed and twisted and managed to spray him in the face. 

He jerked his face aside enough so most of it spritzed over his cheek and neck, not in his eyes. It smelled like apple pie, thank god, so she must have washed it out.

"I already got whammied," he said, still hanging on. "I'm a fucking love god today, and while it sucks, you can't double-whammy me."

"That's not what that was," she said. "Have fun getting beaten to shit, asshole. Your friend there should be the first punch."

"Joke's on you, she's immune," Cisco said, just as it began to snow around them. 

Bella took advantage of his frozen horror (pun possibly intended) to twist out of his hands and start running again. 

He gathered up a boom in both hands, old nightmare visions of a pitched battle in the forest rising up, and turned to face Killer Frost.

"Don't just stand there, moron," she said in her two-toned voice. "Go get her!"

He gaped for a split second, and then his brain kicked into gear. He squinted after the fleeing Bella, then quickly breached to a spot ahead of her, down the street. She skidded to a halt, caught between Frost and Vibe.

"We just want to see the bottle," Cisco said.

"Speak for yourself, I just want to kick somebody's ass," Frost said.

Bella pointed behind her. "Kick  _ his _ , I sprayed him! That was the point!"

"Mmmm. Nah. Caity would be mad at me." Frost's teeth flashed white between her blue lips. "Anyway there's plenty of people who want to do that."

Cisco looked around and found himself at the center of a contracting ring of angry-looking random people. "I don't have  _ time _ for this!" he groaned, and threw a boom at the nearest gutter puddle. Mud and rainwater sprayed, some of the people reeled back, and he darted through the break in the crowd to grab for Bella again. 

She shrieked and twisted, but the bottle must have gotten wet, because it slid out of her fingers and bounced to the street. A split second later, a jet of ice froze it to the concrete.

It was like someone had yanked a sheet off his head.

Two sheets.

The mob suddenly stopped mobbing and transformed into a crowd of confused people, standing around and blinking. "What was that?" someone asked.

"Who is that guy? I don't even know him and I suddenly hated him," someone else said.

"I didn't know if I wanted to kiss him or punch him," said a confused-looking woman.  


Cisco noted the use of past tense. Clearly, the whammy was gone. Both of them.

When he looked back at Killer Frost, she was Caitlin again, blinking and clutching her head. "Oh," she said. "Oh, wow. That was. Oh."

"You okay?" he asked.

"Uh-huh."

Benny Imura came rushing up. "What's going on?"  


"Hey, Benny," Cisco said. "Sorry about all this. But I think you might need to take this lady in for questioning regarding a convenience store riot and subsequent robbery last night."

Bella sagged in his grip and started to cry.

* * *

"I gotta be honest," Cisco said. "I kind of feel bad for her, now it's all over. She was just trying to pull in customers so she could recoup what she lost when the shop burned down, because the insurance wouldn't pay out. Apparently you're classified as an act of God," he told Barry.

Barry blinked. "I am?"

"Don't let it go to your head," Cisco advised, and returned to what he was saying. "And she squirted the perfume in the convenience store by accident."

"But she did steal the till in all the confusion," Iris pointed out. "She didn't have to do that, no matter how much money she lost yesterday by not having the bottle around to pull people in."

"Yeah, I know. Cool motive, still crime."

"People really got hurt, too," Nora said. "Loosened teeth, broken bones, at least two concussions, and let's not forget being sedated in the hospital for almost a day."

"Hey, she's locked up," Cisco said. "And more importantly, this bad boy is locked up." He picked up a clear canister and shook it lightly so the perfume bottle inside rattled against the sides. 

They had a few of these now. He'd designed and built it to encase meta devices like the Cicada's dagger. It worked in much the same way the pipeline did, suppressing the expression of dark matter.

"What I can't figure is how she was able to get three different types of pheromones out of one bottle," he mused.

"I talked to her a little while we were transporting her," Caitlin said. "And apparently, intention has a lot to do with it. Bella wanted more than anything to get more customers. So when she sprayed that perfume, that's what happened. And last night, she was really angry when she stormed into that convenience store."

"The same today when she sprayed me."

"Mmmm. She was expecting me to turn on you. She didn't know that I handle anger by turning it over to Killer Frost."

Cisco gave her a thoughtful look and wondered, not for the first time, exactly how much anger was boiling away behind her cheerful smile and helpful manner.

"That's another thing," Barry said. "How did Frost know ice would neutralize it?"

Caitlin's gaze turned inward, the way it did when she was talking back and forth with her alter ego. She scowled. "You were not. Stop. You know I'd be very upset with you if anything happened to him."

"What is it?" Iris asked.

Caitlin huffed. "She keeps saying she was trying to hit Bella instead."

Cisco sat up straight. "What? I was standing right next to Bella!"

"Exactly." She shook her head. "Okay, she's being serious now. Just says it's amazing how many things absolute zero will neutralize."

"Would the effect have worn off on its own, eventually?"

"Bella really wasn't sure. She usually had to reapply the gathering pheromone every couple of hours, but that was the only one she ever used, up until she accidentally sprayed the aggression one last night."

Cisco frowned. "So, wait. If intention is behind the choice of pheromones, then that means - "

"Ruth, for all her avarice, actually did want to make you feel sexy."

"So I'd buy more stanky perfume."

"Well, there's that."

Sherloque reached over and picked up the canister. "I don't know why you were complaining so much. What's so bad about everyone falling in love with you? Quite the ego boost, non?"

Cisco groaned. "That's what I thought, until it happened to me."

Sherloque started to open the canister, and everyone yelled, " _ Don't!" _

* * *

Cisco went home and vegged in front of the TV with a takeout pizza. Nothing with a love story, or even a romantic subplot. He wasn't up for that at all. He fell asleep halfway through an episode of TNG.

But somewhere around midnight, he sat up straight (he'd peeled himself off the couch and gone to bed) and swore in two languages.

Caitlin hadn't been immune to the aggression pheromone, or the gathering one. Which meant she wasn't immune to the attraction pheromone either. 

She was just immune to  _ him. _

* * *

The next morning, Cisco breached into the alley next to Jitters and made his way inside, looking around warily. But nobody paid him the slightest bit of unusual attention. The barista charged him the usual amount, the people around him in line were buried in their phones. He was regular-octane Cisco again. 

It was kind of nice to be invisible, except for what he'd realized about Caitlin last night. He slouched out through the back into the alley and breached into Star Labs to find Ralph sitting in his lab. 

Cisco almost spilled piping-hot mocha latte all over himself. 

They hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Elongated Man since he'd dropped in yesterday. He looked like he was fine. He wore a pensive expression, which looked a little strange on his face. 

"Hey," Cisco said. "Hey, Ralph, how's it going? Where've you been?"

"Around," the other man said. "Look, I'm sorry about yesterday, if I made you uncomfortable. I know you're not into me. I was whammied, but - "

"Oh, fssshhh, that?" Cisco said, trying to sound careless. "It's cool, I was flattered." Actually, he had been, a little. No matter how obnoxious it had gotten over the course of the day, there was always a little ego bump when someone thought you were attractive, and they weren't gross about it.

"Caitlin told me how that whammy worked."

"Right," Cisco said, setting his coffee down, trying to figure out where this conversation was going. Figuring out you were in a closet was a tricky business. "Uh, so . . . "

Ralph said, "She also said it didn't create anything out of thin air. Just kind of bumped up what was there already."

"Um," Cisco said.

The other man grinned suddenly. "I'm not declaring my undying love, man. Figure you had enough of that yesterday, and besides, I think you're already spoken for. It's just . . . " Ralph spun his chair a little. "Ol' Ralphie's thinking some big thoughts here," he said.

Cisco watched him. "You need to talk? You know I've been there."

"I . . . " He trailed off. "Maybe after I think those thoughts?"

"Sure," Cisco said. "Anytime."

"Thanks, man."

When Ralph had left, Cisco started waking up his computers. He was torn about whether he wanted to see Caitlin this morning. Well, he always wanted to see Caitlin, but it was going to be pretty difficult, knowing he was crazy about her and she was so completely unattracted to him that even a love whammy hadn't affected her.

_Get used to it,_ he lectured himself. _She's still your friend. Don't be that guy._

Fuck, it was hard, though. 

He'd just taken out a pad of graph paper to doodle on when Iris's voice echoed over the intercom. "God, what a day yesterday, right?"

He lifted his head and squinted at the speakers.

"I'm just hoping for boring, today," Caitlin said.

He frowned in confusion, then realized that the intercom in her lab was still on. They'd gotten sick of clicking it on and off yesterday and just locked it in the "on" position.

Iris laughed. "So, how was it? Spending all day in close proximity with Cisco the Love God."

"Actually," Caitlin said. "It felt like a normal day."

Oh, man. Oh shit. He reached for the intercom button, hoping to quietly mute it and then wallow in here with ice cream for about a week. 

Then Caitlin laughed hollowly. "Which just goes to show you how pathetic I am."

"Honey, you're not pathetic. Just - "

"Unrequited?"

His hand jerked, almost sending his mocha latte to its doom for the second time in an hour.

_ What? _

"Did you consider acting like it had gotten to you too?" Iris asked.

"A few times. But you heard him. He hated that it wasn't him people were reacting to, it was the pheromones. And he needed someone who could be normal with him and figure out what was happening. I couldn't take that away from him."

Cisco gripped his work table in a stranglehold. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? He held his breath, willing her to just lay it right out there.  _ The reason I wasn't acting all suddenly in love with Cisco is because I'm  _ already _ in love with Cisco. _

But was Nora's voice that came over the speakers next. “Guys, did you know the intercom is still on?”

There was a strangled gasp and a sharp click. 

" _ Fuck," _ Cisco said.

Staring at the speaker, he replayed the conversation over and over again in his head.

Unrequited. Unrequited. 

Was this just wishful thinking?

If he walked upstairs right now, would Caitlin cringe and say, "Oh, I'm sorry, Cisco. We were talking about someone else. I only think of you as a friend."?

But they'd said his name. Both syllables, clear as day. 

_ Unrequited. _

But she'd never said anything. Never done anything. Over the past months, he'd dissected every smile she aimed at him, every text that she sent him in the middle of the night, every tone and overtone of the way she said his name. But every time he'd come to the same conclusion - she was behaving exactly the same.

Then again, so was he.

He'd spent months now acting like his feelings hadn't changed, like his heart hadn't started straining in her direction like a flower hungry for sun. He'd been so determined not to let any of it slip.

Was it possible that she'd been equally determined?

Before he could talk himself out of it, Cisco jumped to his feet and dashed out of his lab, up the stairs, along the curving hall, and into the cortex. Inside her lab, Caitlin and Iris were sitting with their heads together, murmuring secret friend murmurs. 

Caitlin looked wild-eyed and Iris was trying to soothe, by the angle of her hand and the motion of her hands.

Iris saw him first, and her eyes and mouth both went wide. She snapped her mouth shut and said something to Caitlin, who stiffened all over.

Cisco hesitated outside the door, and then set his jaw and walked in. "Hi," he said.

"Hi," Iris said. She looked between them and said, "I have a place to be that is away." She evaded Caitlin's hands and slipped past Cisco, giving him an unfathomable look.

Caitlin mouthed something that looked like  _ Traitor _ after her, then visibly posted on a calm expression. "Good morning."

"Morning," he said. Now that he was here, he didn't know what to do or say. All his doubts rose up in a cloud around him.

"So," she said, turning away to fiddle with something on her desk. "Did you just get in?"

"Nope," he said. 

"Oh," she mumbled.

"Been here about half an hour," he added. 

"Okay," she said in a very small voice. "So you - "

"Heard what you said about yourself, yeah."

She swallowed hard. "I - um - "

"You're not," he said.

"What?" she said. "Pathetic?" Her face crumpled. "Don't be kind, please - " 

"No," he said, heart in his throat. "Unrequited."

Her lips parted.

"If what you meant is, you're in love with me and you think I'm not in love with you back, then I'm here to tell you've got faulty information, Doctor Snow. I love you so much more than any pheromone whammy could account for. I've loved you for  _ months _ and even if you kick me out of this room today, I'll still love you - "

The rest of his words were cut off by her mouth on his.

He kissed her back, of course, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her like he'd been wanting to do so badly for so long. She made a soft noise against his mouth and her fingers curled into his shirt. The kiss spread through him like hot chocolate, sweet and warm and comforting after a long time in the cold.  


"You never said anything," she said when they had come up for air.

"Neither did you," he said. "You know what you did say? Go ahead, get that girl's number. Tell me all about your date. Are you going to call him again? Absolutely, I'll help you judge profiles on Tinder. You were like my very own Cyrano de Bergerac."

"Because you were so set on finding love, and I wanted you to be happy," she said. Her eyes shone with a film of tears. "Even if it wasn't with me." She gave a dainty sniff and narrowed her eyes at him suddenly. "And you did the same thing, mister."

"For the same reason," he said. "More than anything, I wanted you to be happy. I was dating all those people to try and get over you, so that I could be genuinely happy for you when you found Mr. Right."

"I did," she said. "He's right here."

"Oh," he said. "Oh, that was smooth. Well done." He kissed her again.

Several minutes later, the door to her lab opened and Barry's voice said, "Hey, Caitlin, can you - Oh shit."

They broke apart see Barry calling over his shoulder, "Iris! Iris, Cisco got whammied again. Or Caitlin, I'm not sure - "

"Barry!" they both said, and he looked back at them.

"This isn't a whammy, Barry," Caitlin said more gently.

"But you guys were kissing."

"Yeah. Still not a whammy." Cisco smiled at Caitlin, and she smiled back. "This is the real thing."

FINIS


End file.
